


We'll be there

by geethr75



Series: Steve Centric Infinity War fics [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Spoilers, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Compliant, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, Iron Man 1 Movie Spoilers, M/M, Steve Feels, Steve Rogers-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 13:37:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16087196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geethr75/pseuds/geethr75
Summary: Steve gets a call from Bruce, and realizes a few things.A look at the infinity war Steve scenes from the off screen phone call to their journey to Wakanda.





	We'll be there

**Author's Note:**

> This came out of the blue, when I was trying to just relax by taking a break from all my original works.Hope you all enjoy it. Please leave kudos and comments.

When the phone rings, Steve stares at it for a few seconds, shock and a few other feelings that he cannot name, keeping him immobile. After two years, he has lost all hope that Tony will ever call. Why should he anyway? Steve had told him to call if he needed them, and he hadn’t. That much is evident. No world-ending catastrophes has occurred, Iron Man hasn’t got himself caught in any situation where he’ll need someone else’s help. But when Steve had sent the phone with those words, he hadn’t meant “need” as in “desperate-life-threatening-or-world-ending-scenario-need”. He’d meant Tony could call if he needed to talk to him, even if it was only to yell at him or—but he should’ve known Tony wouldn’t call for anything that simple.

There’s also the fact that Tony’s one of the most self sufficient people Steve has ever known. Tony has never needed anybody’s help. If someone is at hand, or offering help, Tony will accept, he will have have no hesitation in asking, but if he’s alone, it’s not going to occur to Tony to seek it. He’d built his mini arc reactor and his first suit in a cave in Afghanistan with Yinsen’s help, with a car battery plugged into his chest and terrorists threatening his life, but Steve has no doubt that if Yinsen wasn’t there, Tony would still have built his reactor and his suit and escaped, because that’s the kind of man Tony is. So perhaps, it is rather stupid of Steve to expect Tony to call. That thought has kept Steve awake a fair number of nights, and he knows now that Tony isn’t going to call, because that’s just not who Tony is. 

Steve, on the other hand, has always needed people. He may be stubborn but he has always known there are things he can’t do alone, and he’s never hesitated to ask for help. 

Steve has always known Tony’s stronger than him. 

Yet, Tony is calling him. 

Steve snatches the phone up and answers, “Tony?” His heart is hammering? What has happened? 

“Steve,” the voice at the other end is not unfamiliar, but even with serum enhanced memory, it’s hard for Steve to place. “It’s Bruce. Tony’s gone.” Steve sits down because he suddenly can’t stand, his limbs are weak, and shaking and he clutches the phone to his ear, afraid of dropping it. For some strange reason, there’s this echo in his ears of Bruce’s words. “Tony’s gone.” It’s impossible, his brain cannot deal with it, because how can Tony be gone?

“Steve, are you still there?” Bruce’s words, and his anxiety breaks through the echo of “Tony’s gone” and Steve knows he has to pull himself back together. He has no time to grieve, even if he has the right, which he’s pretty sure he has forfeited in a Siberian bunker two years ago, alongwith the shield that Howard had made for him. 

“I’m here, Bruce. Can you tell me what happened, again?” he’s surprised his voice isn’t shaking, which at this point, is the only thing about him that isn’t, and that makes him grateful that he’s alone right now, because he really doesn’t want anyone to see him like this.

Bruce tells him about Thanos, and invasion, and Vision’s stone, and the attack which had led to Tony going off on his own on a spaceship. Steve doesn’t understand the half of it, but he gets that they’ve to get Vision back in the compound safely.

“We’ll be there,” Steve tells Bruce, unconsciously echoing the words he’d written to Tony. 

Steve tries not to think of Tony as he fights the two aliens, and only after rescuing Vision, does he think that it took five of them, if you count Vision, to defeat just two of Thanos’ minions. And if you look at them, on paper at least, they’re so strong, all of them. A super soldier, a master assassin and spy, a trained pilot with a cool set of wings, an android with superpowers, and a girl who can move things with her mind.

And all five of them—together—could barely defeat two.

And Tony had faced them alone, was in a spaceship alone, facing god knows how many of those things. Steve knows, rationally, that it’s not logical to cling to hope, to think that Tony will make it, because Tony always has. He escaped that wormhole in New York, he got away after blasting a flying city to pieces, but Steve knows that it was also the suit, that underneath the armour, Tony is just a human, with a genius brain, but nothing else. He’s completely vulnerable without his suit, and Steve thinks he can hear the sound of metal tearing as his shield comes down on Tony’s face plate, and god, he doesn’t want to think of that right now, of Tony throwing his arms up in front of his face as the shield rises again—as if his arms were enough to stop a Vibranium shield—and Steve still has nighmares where he smashes that shield through Tony’s arms and into his face. 

Steve doesn’t want to think of it, because he knows how close he was to killing his friend, though he no longer has the right to call Tony that. 

He hasn’t had a nightmare about the ice or of Bucky falling off the train since Siberia, but his nights haven’t gotten any better.

His sleepless nights these days involve nightmares with the sound of the shield tearing into human flesh and bone, and then he wakes and picks up his phone and wills for Tony to call him. 

Fortunately, Steve’s nightmares are always quiet, so the others doesn’t know of them, and he’s grateful for small mercies.

“Where to, Cap?” Sam asks, and Steve tries not to flinch at the familiar title—and of how Tony was the one who gave it to him in the first place—and he hesitates for the barest moment before he says, “Home.” 

He doesn’t know what’s waiting for them there, but he knows that’s where they have to be. He has to get Vision back to the compound. Tony’s gone, and it is upto Steve and his team to do what they can to protect Earth. He has no time for grief, for guilt or for anything else. He may not be Captain America anymore, but he is still the leader of his team, and Steve is scared, so scared, that he will let them down, and in spite of what he told Tony, he knows that losing together is not an option, not this time, and probably it has never been an option. 

Would they have won against the Chitauri if Tony hadn’t intercepted that nuke and carried it through a wormhole? Would they have won against Ultron if Tony and Thor hadn’t risked their lives, attacking that core from above and below? Now that both Thor and Tony are gone, Steve fears that he is not enough. He’s still that kid from Brooklyn, fighting bullies twice his size because backing down was not an option, and no bully can fight for ever, right? But he’s in way over his head here, and he knows it, but he can’t afford to show it, never could, not to his team, not to the world, because he is Captain America and he cannot afford to be seen as weak. 

So, Steve does what he does best, pushes everything to the back of his mind, and focusses on the mission.

Of all the things he may have imagined waiting for him back home, a hologram of Secretary Ross getting in his face, spewing vitriol is not one. 

“I’m not looking for forgiveness, and I’m way past asking permission,” Steve is surprised at how steady his voice is, at how it sounds as if he’s not a mess inside. He looks at Ross, and thinks that if not for this man, Tony might be here today, they wouldn’t be outlaws, the Avengers would have been together, and he tries to bring up all that anger, but Tony is gone, and all Steve feels is lost, but he can’t afford to be lost because somehow, everyone is looking to him now to lead, to take charge of the situation, to defeat Thanos. “Earth just lost her best defender, so we’re here to fight. If you want to stand in our way, we’ll fight you too.” 

A part of Steve is hysterically laughing at his own words. Tony wasn’t Earth’s best defender; he was earth’s only defender, for what does Steve know of taking on an alien super being, or of infinity stones? All Steve knows is to fight, to keep on fighting, till he’s dead or the other one backs off, but somehow he feels that it won’t be enough here. But that’s all he knows, and he’ll do that. He can do that.

He tries not to look around, to see if the place is the same. He tries to ignore the fear that this place is no longer home. But then, Steve has never had a home, not since he woke up from the ice, and his home has always been the people nearest to him, his mother, Bucky, Peggy, and when he came to this century, there was no one left, no home left, till the Avengers, and the compound, and his team with whom he’d found a new home. But it isn’t the same, because his team might follow him to the ends of the earth, but none of them knew him, it is Captain America they follow, not Steve. And Bucky... Bucky doesn’t give a damn for Captain America, never has, it was Steve he followed in the war, it was Steve whom he trusted, and how could Steve have let him down, how could Steve have lost him again? 

He shakes hands with Rhodey, ignores the guilt that rears its head at the sight of the man’s braces, ignores the gaping hole in his heart when he thinks of Tony’s brilliance that has made it possible for Rhodey to walk again, and is grateful that Rhodey doesn’t bring up the past or look at him accusingly. He ignores the banter between Rhodey and Sam, and the awkwardness of Bruce and Nat greeting each other. He wishes with all his heart that Tony were here, because he has no idea what to do, where to start. He understands that the mind stone cannot fall into Thanos’ hands, and for that Vision has to be protected, and he thinks he can do that, till Vision says, 

“No, we have to destroy it.” They all stare at Vision, and Steve knows Vision is not human, he’s not alive, but he’s part of their team. Steve asks himself what Tony would have done, and he knows that Tony would have found a way to destroy the stone and to keep Vision alive because that’s who Tony is. He’s the man who cuts the wire, who finds the third option in an either-or situation, and though he’s gone, Steve can try doing it his way, to keep Vision alive and to keep the stone out of Thanos’ hands.

“We don’t trade lives,” he says, but he has no answer when Vision asks him how the situation is different from when he had landed his plane on ice all those decades ago, fully expecting to die. Fortunately, he’s saved by Bruce intervening and explaining that Vision is not the stone or at least not just the stone. The discussion shifts, and Steve is again lost in his own thoughts and fears, till Rhodey says they need to find a place and someone fast. And Steve thinks that he can help with this. He is helpless in front of the bigger picture, but he can take care of the little things, like keeping Vision safe, protecting the stone, and finding a place where Vision can be kept safe.

“I know somewhere,” he says.

All the way to Wakanda, all Steve can remember is Tony saying, “That up there... that’s the endgame. How we guys planning on beating that?” 

“Together.” 

How Steve wishes he could go back in time and punch his younger self, so cocksure, so certain that he was right, so sure that they would be together. 

He’d said it, that they would be together, he’d promised Tony that they’d be there if he needed them, but when the threat came, Tony had to face it alone with a couple of wizards and Spider man his only back up. Only now, can Steve see that giving Tony a phone and asking him to call if he needed them, was never a solution. Because when a threat like Thanos happens, it happens without warning, and even if Tony had called, by the time Steve reaches him, it would have been too late. Only now, does Steve realize that accords or no accords, they should have stayed together, and he should have found a way to make that happen. 

But they’re not together, and Tony is lost to them, but Steve will not give up. He may not know much about aliens or technology or stones, but he knows how to plan an assault, he knows how to fight, he knows how to strategize, and he will do whatever it takes to keep the planet safe, even if it kills him. 

He just hopes it will be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I was trying to be kind to Steve in this, which I generally aren't. Tell me what you think.


End file.
